Cons
Stereo earbuds are actually wired. Controls are a mixed bag. Requires seven Android app installs. No text-to-speech support in English. Buggy playback from microSD cards, and doesn't support AAC files in this mode. Plenty of cable thump when moving3.

Bottom Line

The Bluetooth Sony Smart Wireless Headset Pro doubles as an FM radio/MP3 player. And while it sounds good, it's buggy and fails to deliver a compelling overall experience.

Can't decide if you want a stereo Bluetooth headset for your phone, or just a standalone MP3 player? Sony covers both bases with the Smart Wireless Headset Pro ($149.99 direct). At its core, it's a stereo Bluetooth headset for listening to music and taking calls. But thanks to a clip-on body with a built-in microSD card slot, it's also a standalone MP3 player with an FM tuner, and it even reads incoming text and email messages aloud if you have an Android phone. There's less here than it appears, though. For starters, the Smart Wireless Headset Pro isn't actually a wireless headset; it's a wired set of earbuds that plugs into a separate body. Combine that with some other design foibles and buggy overall performance, and you get a product in search of a customer.

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Design and SetupThe package includes the wireless headset, a USB cable for transferring media files, an AC adapter, a 2GB microSD card, a USB microSD card reader that folds out to expose the USB port, four pairs of eartips in various sizes, and a user guide. The main body is made entirely of glossy black and dark gray plastic. It measures 2.4 by 1.0 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 0.95 ounces. The MP3 player clip contains plenty of hardware controls, including a pair of volume buttons on one edge, and track play and skip controls on the opposite side. A multi-function button in the center handles answering and rejecting calls, while a built-in OLED display makes the player easier to navigate.

The microSD card slot supports cards up to 32GB; both the included 2GB card and my 32GB SanDisk card worked fine. The plastic cover is tough to remove, and when you do, it stays attached on a rubber piece so that you don't lose the cap—except that the cap gets in the way the entire time while you're inserting the memory card, unless you learn to hold it back with your other hand. A better solution would have been to leave the cap off entirely; port caps never make sense unless it's something you'll almost never use, such as with a SIM card slot. That brings me to the second problem: In my tests, it was tough to insert either microSD card, and required considerable force, though removing the card was easier.

The earphones include 6mm drivers and soft, comfortable rubber eartips. I had no problem getting an easy fit. The flat, rubberized wire is in a Y-shape, and only extends a few feet—long enough to clip the unit to your shirt, but not long enough to keep it in your pants pocket.

Bluetooth pairing isn't particularly intuitive, either; you'll need the manual. To pair the set, you have to go menu diving inside the headset itself, and then confirm that a six-digit PIN is the same on both devices. You also have to confirm it, not using the big multifunction right next to the screen, but using the small Play button on the top edge. I paired the headset with a Samsung Galaxy Nexus without issue.

Android Apps and Voice CallsPair the Smart Wireless Headset Pro with an Android phone, and you'll gain the ability to dial numbers from the recent call list, and read messages aloud into the headset. The software installation is exceedingly complex, though. Sony makes two separate main apps for the headset: Livewire Manager and Smart Wireless Headset Pro. You install the first via Google Play, pair the earphones, and then it will prompt you to install the second app. It also asked for two separate over-the-air updates afterward (one for firmware and one for one of the apps), which was a little awkward.

But that's not all. Maddeningly, you need to install an extra five Smart Extra apps for each of the extra Android features, one at a time, for a total of seven manual app installs. Next to nothing is enabled by default, either. It's not just text-to-speech and Bluetooth pairing confirmations; even multipoint, which lets you pair two devices simultaneously, needs to be enabled first, which I can't recall ever seeing before in a Bluetooth headset.

The embedded OLED display shows the currently selected source, battery level, caller ID status, and current track names when playing music. Voice calls sounded fine, with a slightly tinny tone in the earbuds, but clear and loud transmissions through the microphone. Overall it will easily do for day-to-day voice calls, provided you stay within relatively quiet environments, as I couldn't hear any noise cancellation circuitry working.

During voice calls, the OLED shows incoming or outgoing caller ID, plus ongoing call time. When you get an SMS message, it will display the text in a scrolling line. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the headset to read the text back to me aloud, even after I installed the extra component for Smart Extras Messaging. It turns out that only four languages are available, and none of them are English yet. You can make this work by installing SVOX's Classic Text to Speech Engine in the Play Store and buying a US English voice, but that's an extra $2.99 and yet more additional installation steps.

Music Performance and FM RadioFor music, I tested the Smart Wireless Headset Pro both as a standalone MP3 player and as a stereo Bluetooth headset paired with the Galaxy Nexus. As a standalone player, it's a bust: Before and after a firmware upgrade, all MP3 files I tested stuttered during playback from various microSD cards, and the player wouldn't recognize any of my iTunes AAC files in standalone mode—it only supports MP3 and WAV files. (A second Smart Wireless Headset Pro that Sony sent us had the same problem.) Over Bluetooth, this wasn't a problem, since the phone was decoding the files, not the Smart Wireless Headset Pro.

So for the rest of the review, I focused on Bluetooth audio—fortunately with solid results. The Smart Wireless Headset Pro's many problems fade once you start listening to music, which sounds smooth and warm, with punchy bass response, plenty of low-end extension, and slightly muted but still airy highs. You won't get the same level of detail out of these as, say, a $150 pair of wired earbuds, but unless you're an audiophile, you'll most likely find the sound quite good.

Some examples: Alex Parks' cover of "Mad World" sounded great, with her smooth and airy vocal, and an atmospheric piano behind her voice. Once the electronic bass kicked in, there was an impressive level of extension that stayed even across a range of very low notes. Muse's "Undisclosed Desires" had plenty of image separation, thunderous low-end, and a smooth response across the entire frequency range. System of a Down's "Chop Suey" sounded powerful and energetic, if a little over EQed in the bass and treble. Less successfully, on Cirrus' "Boomerang," the electronic kick drum and synth bass sounded clear, distinct, and punchy, although the cymbals had a little too much coloration in the lower treble and sounded like little bursts of white noise. And Adele's "Rumor Has It" sounded a little flat, with not enough midbass punch from the bombastic drum sounds, although Adele herself sounded smooth, if a little more muffled than usual.

The built-in FM radio also sounds good; the wire in the earphones serves as an antenna, and I heard clear stereo signal on a variety of stations in New York City. The one downside during playback (from any source) is cable thump. More than with most wired headsets, you hear plenty of it through the earphones. And as I mentioned above, since the wire isn't long enough to clip it to a jeans pocket or belt, you have to find a place to clip it on your shirt—and even then, just turning my head back and forth was enough to induce audible thumping artifacts, to say nothing of walking.

ConclusionsOverall, it's tough to figure out exactly who Sony is targeting with the Smart Wireless Headset Pro. If you've got an Android phone, you've already got an excellent MP3 player. If you don't have a smartphone, it would make more sense to buy a more capable standalone music player with a color display. Or, for a little more money, one of Sony's own Walkman Mobile Entertainment Players, which double as movie machines, Web browsers, and gaming platforms—especially since music playback is so problematic from a microSD card.

The best use case I can see is if you need a good sounding stereo Bluetooth headset that doubles as an FM radio. In that, the Sony Smart Wireless Headset Pro is slightly overpriced and a bit bulky, but it sounds good and does the job. That's really not enough to spend $150, though. If you just need wireless stereo headphones, the Sennheiser MM 100 and Outdoor Technology DJ Slims both offer well balanced stereo Bluetooth performance at a lower price and are much easier to use, providing that you don't need the FM radio and don't mind an over-the-ear design. The Plantronics BackBeat Go remains our Editors' Choice stereo Bluetooth headset; it doesn't sound quite as good as some of these, but it's inexpensive and extremely lightweight and easy to carry, and it sounds great on voice calls. The best part: Unlike the Smart Wireless Headset Pro, all three of the above pairs are actually wireless.

Jamie Lendino is the managing editor of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was...

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